A review of the film “A Good Day To Die Hard”

After the considerable success of “Die Hard” (1988) and “Die Hard 2” (1990) and the more restrained reception for “Die Hard With A Vengeance” (1995) and “Die Hard 4.0” (2007), it must have been just too tempting to milk the franchise a bit more with this fifth (and surely final) outing in 2013 by independent-minded and bloody-vested and seemingly indestructible Bruce Willis (now in his late 50s) as New York cop John McClane.

I was never going to visit the cinema to this limp offering but, during the coronavirus lockdown, it turned up on television and I thought that I might as well complete the franchise.

This film has two differences fron the other four: all the action is set outside the United States (Russia – represented by Hungary) and Willis has to share the billing with (Australian) actor Jai Courtney who plays John McClane’s estranged son Jack. But we have the typical deployment of heavy vehicles and military helicopters plus a simply massive bullet-count.

The plot is simply risible, most notably when the two McClanes purport to drive overnight from Moscow to Chernobyl (the road distance between these locations is almost 1,000 kms or over 600 miles and they are actually now in different countries!). However, there is one consolation – this is shortest of the “Die Hard” movies (97 minutes).


 




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